


Desperate Measures

by cipherfresh



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Fear, Horror, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Murder, POV Second Person, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28396092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cipherfresh/pseuds/cipherfresh
Summary: A wormhole envelops your starship. You're smart and clever, you do what it takes to survive. - this story doesn't require a lot of knowledge of Star Trek to be read. This is a part of a Star Trek-set horror project I call Federation Gothic.





	Desperate Measures

**Author's Note:**

> The tags should cover it, but this story is rather gruesome! Not in a gore way, but in a more psychological horror way. I'm stupidly proud of this, which I wrote frantically over the course of an hour one morning in July.

At first, you were a little anxious when your captain told the crew that the ship had been thrust into an area of no starlight, no supplies, no planets anywhere. You had plenty of power. The Captain says not to panic, that there may be a problem with the sensors, and that the ship will just keep heading to where it was. There’s no stars, no nebulas, nothing distinct anywhere to indicate your location. The scans- all showing nothing- the captain says it’s no reason for concern. You don’t like that. 

A couple of weeks pass, nothing has happened yet. You know the ship is moving. A conspiracy theorist from Stellar Cartography says the ship isn't moving at all, and the crew was placed here to die. The blank void outside is distressing to look at. You and a few others board up the windows, to avoid having to look at the soul-sucking view outside. The ship continues on it's way. You miss seeing constellations. The ship sends out transmissions every day, general, I am the Captain of the Federation Starship…. ones. The ship’s command is hoping somebody nearby will see the ship and help them out of whatever uncharted, starless territory you are in. 

The ship's counselor's days are full of therapy sessions after a few months. Your captain is nervous. They shut down the holodecks, one of the biggest energy saps on the ship. They say they're afraid they may not get out of this void. The ship needs to conserve energy for the warp drive, because they haven’t seen a way out of the void they were mysteriously thrust into. People are moved to decks near the bridge. turbolifts are paused. Things stay like that. Nothing new happens. You wish for enemy ships to attack, at least something exciting would happen. People’s things are all moved to other decks, to avoid having to illuminate so much unnecessary space. The First Officer thought it was a very drastic measure, and the First Officer and Captain had a very public argument in the mess hall. It unnerves you to your core to see two people, the heart of the ship, in so much distress about the fate of the ship and it’s crew. 

A year passes. There was a kid born. Another year. As the time goes by, people are huddled into a few decks to avoid giving power to everywhere, only the essential areas, cramming people into smaller areas of the ship, more and more. The day things got desperate was when your captain stood up from their chair in the mess hall, and walked up to the replicator and recycled the utensils. She stood up on a chair and begged her crew to find anything to recycle to the replicators for more power. She said the warp drive had failed, and they were out of dilithium. Any power was going to impulse engines. Anything you could recycle was going to the industrial-size replicator in the cargo bay. 

You eat Federation ration packs, now. You rip them out of a faux-plastic container. The faux-plastic is edible if you add water. You do that. Things recycled include 50% of the PADDs on the ship, doors to decks that have been depowered, all chairs outside of the bridge, decorational plants, the window boards, a few personal belongings that some people could live without, the like. Something that caused a shift in you was seeing people recycle their combadges. People would be in pairs, now, one person with a combadge, one without, so they could recycle half of them. 

You shut down nonessential screens like the ones indicating the time and stardate. The day you really started to lose it was when they lowered the brightness of the lights- you'd put your arm up to the wall for balance. You feel like you haven't put it down since then. Your combadge partner stays in their shared quarters with 15 other people all day, so you get to keep the combadge. You can explore around. You're looking through dark decks which still have life support, and find a few space suits- the ship was designed to hold 300 people, and 6 have died since the journey started. You drag six spacesuits up to the industrial-size replicator in the cargo bay by yourself, and to be honest, it felt like a drug high, watching the space suits disappear. 

You see someone across your quarters roll their sleeves up, and it gives you an idea- you take off your outer shirt, take off your combadge, and are left in your Starfleet undershirt, and shorts. You shamelessly put them in the replicator. Everyone follows suit. When more people die- you've come across dead bodies holding phasers, you suppose not everybody is equipped for deep space missions- you drag another space suit to the replicator to recycle the energy. Each time you head there, there's more people recycling more things in other areas of the ship. Your friend's brave four-year-old son recycles his favorite blanket. You see his little eyes steel as he waddled up to the replicator, taller than him, and stuff it in, having to jump to see it all in there. His little voice wavered, “recycle contents of replicator”, and his eyes teared up as his favorite pink blanket was converted to energy for the ship, and momentary heat. You don't feel bad. you feel like he's doing his part. You're becoming numb to the tragedies around you. The fact bothers you a little bit. You find another dead body a few hours later, and recycle another space suit to the replicator, and it doesn't phase you. You feel only that you're being efficient.

It's been five years in the endless, lightless void. You dropped to impulse three years ago. The old you would have wondered if you were ever going to feel the sun's warmth again on Earth. The current you doesn't care. The brightness of the lights drops again. You've been formulating ways to find more energy out of anywhere- as soon as the lights drop, you find a razor you replicated when you came up with your plan- you shave off your hair. You ask your combadge partner to get the rest of what you couldn't. They look horrified, but then ask you to shave their head. The drug-like high of watching the hair in the replicator disappear is good- but not enough. A phaser here, a half-finished cup of water there. You stop eating the edible packaging of federation rations. right into the replicator they go. You find a tool in engineering, and take a space suit to a deck with 0 life support- you bash pieces of the holodeck apart, and walk back and forth from there to recycle things. It's your routine. The holodeck, after a few weeks, is just a pile of small pieces of metal. That gives you another idea- vacuums. You feel no remorse in using replicator energy to eventually return more than enough back to it. You travel across the holodeck, first, and vacuum up all the metal, dust, skin cells, whatever. It's a bountiful reward when you recycle the energy. Things like rugs collected a lot of skin cells when they were used, then recycled. You vacuum the rugless floors, every division of the ship and last air-filled deck.

Maybe it's been seven years. The crew has dwindled to the toughest who could cope. You got to recycle more and more space suits- you completely ignore the excitement that happens when someone dies- something you've become delighted to watch. You scurry down to recycle another space suit. You, * you * were the resourceful one nobody thought would do anything. You found the space suits. You stripped out of your uniform. You vacuum up skin cells. You have put in more effort than anybody else. You're still chasing the feeling of when you first recycled the six space suits. You got close when you recycled your own hair- you and the ship could still be more efficient. You jump off the deep end seven years and four months into the void. You have no idea how much time you've spent here, though. You weren't there when it happened, but one of the children got pushed to the ground, but according to somebody else, they got phasered by the First Officer, and other people say the child just plain-up committed suicide. You don't feel remorse, or sympathy, you feel like you're on top of the world, because you just found a way to give this ship more power, it's most neglected resource. It's crew. You find the child's body and recycle it, plain and simple. Nobody logs a complaint. You wonder, morbidly, if anyone else had thought of doing that as well. Children were little energy parasites who didn't know how to contribute. You finally made one contribute to the well-being of the crew. You're giddy to recycle another space suit. You treat yourself to holodeck destruction that day, and bask in the high of your pragmatism and efficiency.

It's a few more years of you cleverly doing everything to travel to decks without life support, and bashing things to pieces to vacuum them. The only things that exist these days are the unbreakable super-alloys meant to combat radiation, and of course, the hull itself. You've bought you don't know how much power for this ship. It's clearly more than any of these other slackers have. Your hands are hot, sweaty, and they drop the phaser. The son of your friend- your friend being long dead, by the way, you were happy to have an excuse to recycle a space suit- was arguing with you, and got angry with them. Who were they to determine morality? Who were they to determine what shouldn't get recycled? They don't understand REAL LIFE and the FACTS of the situation. YOU are the only smart one, YOU are the only one on here who isn't away in some fantasy realm. YOU do what it takes to survive. the child goes to the replicator, immediately. You notice something as you're about to recycle their body- their fingernails were broken. You look down at your nails. Without hesitation, you rip the extra keratin off of your fingers, squeeze the ripped piece, covered in your saliva for a moment between your fingers, then throw it in the replicator with the child's body.

It's not enough. You wipe out all the children when everyone is sleeping. You recycle them. You don't feel that brilliant, sweet high of your own intelligence and lack of attachments. You recycle the rest of the space suits. Still not enough. You can't find it. There's got to be something to do to just feel that again, the rush of excitement about your own superiority. You start going after more lucrative targets. The adults who sit there and moan and cry about their situation. When they signed up for Starfleet, they knew the risks. They knew they shouldn't feel mercy. They knew they should have been prepared to make sacrifices. you ask your captain. Your tired, weary captain that if, uh, any * accidents * might happen to the people who didn't contribute anything to the well-being of the ship. If you...you could... make them more energy-efficient. They say yes. You try to stage accidents for some of them, but as more. time. passes. you just start phasering them on sight if they complain about their situation. Everyone agrees it's fair. People report dissenters to you. It's good you're in charge- you're a much better leader than these shmucks, and you are the only one who wasn't a complete snowflake, too afraid to sacrifice people for the greater good. For the good of the better people. Your captain gets into an argument with you one day- you unthinkingly phaser them. You've just been stunning people at this point, then recycling them. You know it gives the replicator more energy if they're alive when they get converted to energy. You wish they could be conscious for it, their screams of pain would be delicious. you are ravenous for more things to do, more things to recycle. 

The ship exits the void. You're scanning planets again. The First officer- they haven't accepted their rank as captain yet- pilots the ship out of the void and into a federation space. It must have been a wormhole, as things suddenly show up on sensors. You're saddened. Federation ships will be here in a few hours. You did so much good! You NEED that high again. There's only one thing left to do.

You climb into the massive, industrial sized replicator in the cargo bay, your center of worship for years. "Computer, recycle contents of the replicator. "And, your molecules begin to warp. You're feeling it, that high, that wonderful feeling of your own intelligence and superiority, you're all warm and blushing and better than everyone else, you have your satisfaction, the wonderful colors surround you. You've finally beaten that high. It feels wonderful. You're dead. the cargo bay and the replicator are cold. Your brain patterns have been wiped from the universe. You never get punished for your misdeeds. You carry on, feeling perfectly warm and relaxed in your high until there's nothing left of you. The survivors of the ship head back to Earth. You don't care, you're too busy being energy floating around the universe.


End file.
